On Potential
When I was growing up, my mother believed I was a prodigy; the only problem was, she didn’t yet know at what.
Clouds
A blushing cloud: 縉雲 (jìn yún). Every time I explain to someone that my name essentially means “a red cloud,” I am reminded of a line from a poem by the 9th century Chinese poet Li Shang Yin.
Grammar and Power
The politics of slang, from Nabokov to Twitter
Left Swipe Smoking?
Strategic campaigns have sold cigarettes to marginalized individuals as a means of rejecting the culture that cast them out.
Sis Visit
On the night before Valentine’s Day, I ran to the Dinky in the frigid February air, wondering for the hundredth time how life would be different if my sister had gone to Princeton.
Eugenics at Princeton
The perception of people with intellectual disabilities as “defective” is grounded in an intellectual superiority that finds its natural home among the academic elite.
@TriciaLockwood
Separating a poet’s work from her tweets.
Astrology
Tonight, the highway is singing beneath us.
Replacing the Irreplacable
Earlier this week, America met its replacement for the (some would say) irreplaceable Jon Stewart.
This Glass Box
My mother is known for throwing lavish parties and not wearing underwear. We have morning glories that crawl up our living room pillars.
It Could Happen Here
How do I explain to my Chilean family that I come from a place where prison statistics, police records, and newspaper headlines all fervently declare that I am not wanted? How do I explain to them what I tell my mother— that I never want to have children, because I know that their skin will be as black as mine?